The Bell Tower of Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv, taken on my visit to the city in August 2017, on a trip to help with the creation of a Beneficial Ownership Register for Ukrainian Companies The world has watched the Russian invasion of Ukraine in horror over the past few weeks. In this blog post, OpenCorporates’ … Continue reading This must be the wakeup call for true corporate transparency
This post is by Chris Taggart, OpenCorporates' CEO and Co-Founder 2019 was a momentous year for OpenCorporates. We achieved much: reached 180 million companies in our database, including the extremely complex jurisdiction of Germany, launched our new Corporate Events feature, took the Quebec company register to court and won, and saw our data used in … Continue reading Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020
Last summer, OpenCorporates announced the creation of the OpenCorporates Trust, the entity that guarantees OpenCorporates’ public-benefit mission, and ensures we always operate to open up company data for the public good. One of our trustees is John Githongo, an anti-corruption journalist, activist and consultant. As an award-winning journalist, Mr Githongo investigated corruption in Kenya, writing … Continue reading Meet our trustees: John Githongo
Last summer, OpenCorporates announced the creation of the OpenCorporates Trust, the entity that guarantees OpenCorporates’ public-benefit mission, and ensures we always operate to open up company data for the public good. One of our trustees is Esther Dyson, a journalist and investor with interests in technology/IT, health and transparency among other things. Esther was founding … Continue reading Meet our trustees: Esther Dyson
What is your role at OpenCorporates? I joined OpenCorporates in April as Chief Technology Officer. What drew you to work for OpenCorporates? When I looked at the company, three things in particular interested me. Firstly, it’s a real revenue-generating business, not one of these venture capital-backed companies that are trying to make a unicorn. Secondly, … Continue reading Meet Alan Buxton, Chief Technology Officer
Here at OpenCorporates, we really care about official company data – and getting this data right means we need to know a lot about the nature of legal entities, what a company is, and what its legal personality actually means, particularly in a world where companies are ever increasing in number, speed and complexity. Every … Continue reading A brief history of shell companies: must read for company data wonks
We're proud to announce that we have now released the first public release of OpenCorporates’ new corporate events system. This has been a really substantial project that's been more complex and more difficult than we expected, and threw up many issues and questions along the way. And there's still much more work to be done … Continue reading At last: corporate events for everyone
Yesterday and today, almost two years since we filed suit against the Quebec company register, OpenCorporates has been appearing in the Montreal Superior Court – to ask the court to rule that we may continue to make the Quebec company register data available to all. This is an important milestone for OpenCorporates, as it's the … Continue reading Report from the open data frontline: OpenCorporates vs Quebec Registraire des Entreprises
TL;DR OpenCorporates has come a long way in the past 6 years, and is increasingly core infrastructure for the corporate world, not to mention an essential tool for journalists, investigators, NGOs and governments. It’s time to ensure that its corporate structure reflects and safeguards that position, ensuring it will always act in the public … Continue reading A corporate structure for the public benefit and the long term
‘Verification’ is frequently said to be a critical step in generating high-quality beneficial ownership information. What’s less clear is what is actually meant by verification, and what are the key factors in the process. In fact, verification is not one step, but three.
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